Governor Christie won in court Wednesday, but the victory will likely be short-lived as he heads for a showdown with the Legislature over pensions and taxes today, a fight likely to go right back before the same judge.

At stake is the security of the state pension system, tax rates for New Jersey’s wealthiest residents and the viability of the next state budget. This fight between Christie, a Republican, and Democrats who control the Legislature comes as both have struggled to move the state out of a sluggish economy and have seen New Jersey’s credit rating downgraded six straight times.

The Legislature is readying today to advance a new state budget — supported by revenue from tax hikes that Christie opposes — that would make a bigger state payment into the pension fund and one that Christie has threatened to reject with his veto pen.

That could send the issue right back to state Superior Court Assignment Judge Mary C. Jacobson of Mercer County, who said Wednesday that Christie is allowed to reduce the pension contribution in the current fiscal year, which ends midnight Monday, by nearly $900 million to help close a $1 billion revenue shortfall.

But Jacobson also said her ruling applies only to the emergency circumstances in the current fiscal year and should not be interpreted as an endorsement of Christie’s plan to also reduce to $681 million the payment for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Her ruling also hinted that she could side against Christie if he makes cuts from the pension payment included in the Legislature’s budget bill due up for votes in the Assembly and Senate on Thursday.

Jacobson said she was convinced by the state’s case that the shortfall in the current fiscal year presented a true fiscal emergency that allowed Christie to take all available funds to plug the gap, even if it meant going back on the contract with public employees.

“I don’t think it was something that he did lightly,” Jacobson said. “He was put between a rock and a hard place.”

The governor claimed victory in a statement released by his office Wednesday evening.

“This was one of the hard choices the people of New Jersey expect me to make, and I am pleased the court recognized the necessity and urgency of this decision so that we can provide key funding for our schools, our colleges, our hospitals and other essential services,” Christie said in the statement.

More than a dozen unions had sued the state in an attempt to block Christie from cutting the pension payment in the last days of the current fiscal year, and union officials said they will sue again if he does not make the $2.25 billion payment that lawmakers are advancing.

Christie has the authority to veto the budget bill outright or make spending cuts using the line-item veto. The state constitution requires a balanced budget in place on July 1, meaning the issue will come to a head early next week.

“Judge Jacobson rejected the Christie administration’s arguments — except for the specific and unusual necessity of 2014,” said Hetty Rosenstein, state director of the Communications Workers of America. “Judge Jacobson did not dismiss our complaint.

“She made it clear she expects to hear from us with regard to 2015,” Rosenstein said. “And mark my words ... she will.”

New Jersey’s pension system is a signature issue for Christie, who pressed hard for a series of policy changes the Legislature passed in 2010 and 2011 that included getting increased contributions from public employees and a promise from the state to make increased employer contributions into the pension fund over a seven-year period. Those changes also declared that the stepped-up state payments are a contractual right of the employees.

Christie has championed those changes in speeches across the country as he rose to national prominence for being a Republican willing to work with Democrats.

But three years into the seven-year plan, Christie scaled back the $1.58 billion payment he originally planned to make in the current fiscal year to just $696 million. That was done, he said, in response to an unexpected $1 billion revenue shortfall brought on by poor tax collections in April.

Christie also scaled back planned spending for the fiscal year that begins July 1 from $34.4 billion to $32.7 billion, primarily by reducing a planned $2.25 billion pension payment to $681 million.

He is also calling for new public employee benefits reforms but said he won’t provide details until later this summer.

The Legislature’s budget, which totals $34.1 billion, would make the $2.25 billion pension contribution. But it relies on revenue that would be generated by increasing the tax rate on income over $1 million, and by hiking corporate taxes as well.

Christie threatened to veto those tax hikes Wednesday during a town-hall-style event in Haddon Heights.

“I simply don’t believe that for the most overtaxed people in America already that what we need to do is raise more taxes,” Christie said during the event at Atlantic Avenue Elementary School.

“I believe the way to deal with our budget crisis — and we have one — is to reduce spending and reform entitlements,” Christie said. “The Legislature believes that the way to do it is let’s guess, raise taxes.”

Also during the event, members of the Haddon Heights Education Association protested the pension cuts outside the school.

After the court hearing, Wendell Steinhauer, New Jersey Education Association president, said Jacobson’s ruling “reaffirmed that these pension contributions are a contractual right of the members of the pension system.”

“Enforcing that contractual right will be the cornerstone of our litigation going forward, as we seek to hold Governor Christie accountable for obeying the law he signed.”

Though Christie compared New Jersey to bankrupt Detroit during his event Wednesday, his attorneys painted a different picture of the pension system in court in Trenton, saying the funds are solvent enough to pay employees for the next 30 years.

“The system is not on the verge of immediate collapse,” Assistant Attorney General Jean Reilly told Jacobson.

Christie said he’s still working on a proposal to make additional public employee benefits changes and plans to put something forward publicly later this summer.

“The defined-benefit pension system is becoming a dinosaur,” he said. “Nowhere in the private sector do you see it anymore. General Motors went bankrupt because of their pension system. Don’t think it can’t happen in the public sector, too. Let’s look at the city of Detroit.”

He said he’d even be willing to work on a solution with lawmakers as well as the unions that are suing him.

“That’s what we need to get to, get everybody in a room, all the people who represent interested parties and say how are we going to fix this,” Christie said in response to a question from a retiree in Haddon Heights.

But Rosenstein, whose union represents a large number of state employees, said she’s skeptical of any proposals the governor might make.

“The first thing I would say is you first have to do what the law says, and you have to keep your promise,” she said. “You can’t sign a law, run around the country bragging about it and then come back and say, ‘I changed my mind. I don’t like that law, now I want to talk to you again about a different law.’”